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Thursday, February 29, 1912:I was quite conscious of the fact that this comes only once in four years. This day I mean. We had a visitor at school today. Two I may say. One was the county superintendent. By good luck he wasn’t there, when we had a hard study to go through.

A hundred years ago the country superintendent probably came down this road with a horse and buggy as he entered the McEwensville. The road wasn't paved back then.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

It’s interesting that it was also a leap year a hundred years ago. (If I had thought about it, I would have been able to easily figure out that both years were leap years, but somehow I was surprised.)

Counties were the intermediary unit between the state and the schools a hundred years ago in Pennsylvania. There were not large school districts back then. Many of the consolidated districts—including the Warrior Run School District that now includes McEwensville— were formed in the 1950s.

The superintendent of schools for the county probably visited McEwensville High School because of the mid-year change in teachers. McEwensville High School got a new teacher just ten days prior to the writing of this entry. The superintendent probably came to see how the new teacher was doing. I hope that he passed with flying colors!

Hello

I look forward to sharing my grandmother's diary with relatives and friends. Helena Muffly (Swartz) kept a diary from 1911-1914. She was 15 years old when she began this diary. I plan to post these entries one day at a time—exactly 100 years after she wrote them. I hope you enjoy this glimpse back to a slower paced time.

The header is a picture of the farm where my grandmother lived when she wrote this diary. It is located in Northumberland County in central Pennsyvlania about a mile outside of McEwenvsille. My father said that the buildings look similar to what they looked like when he was a child.